“I don’t have an ulterior motive here. I don’t think he’s the guy, which means the police have stopped looking for the real guy.” Robert shrugged and hoped it came off as believable. “I’ve thought it through, Martin. I’m reaching out to the courts this afternoon to set up a meeting.”
Martin let out a sigh. “You’re a grown man, Rob. You know the case better than anyone. But this feels rotten. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m not asking permission.” Robert balled up the napkin and tossed it into a round wastebasket beside Martin’s desk. He needed to end this meeting, before the questions began. Martin would nail him with brilliant, precise, and unavoidable inquiries that Robert wouldn’t have answers for because it made no logical sense for him to come within a thousand feet of the Randall Thompson case, not unless he was standing opposite him in the courtroom.
“Okay, but one last thing that has to be said. This is a huge conflict of interest.” Martin stood and walked around the desk, his arms crossing over his wide chest and pinning the front of his blood-red tie into place. “You lose this case, and he’ll sue us. Say that you intentionally botched it. He’ll say you destroyed evidence and led witnesses and didn’t properly represent him.”
“I’m not going to lose.”
Martin let out a frustrated laugh. “What am I missing here? You think he’s innocent? Fine. Let the police and public defender handle that. There’s nothing good that will come from your involvement.”
“I need to meet with him. See what he says. Being his potential attorney gives me face time that I wouldn’t otherwise have.” He squeezed the man’s thick shoulder. “If I don’t believe what he says, I’ll walk. You know I’ll walk.”
Martin shook his head. “He’s not going to want you as his attorney. I can’t imagine he wants to discuss his activities with the father of one of the boys he killed.”
Robert said nothing. He’d spent the evening digging for everything he could find on Randall Thompson. The man worked as a high school science teacher, drove a five-year-old Honda Accord, and lived in a two-bedroom teardown. He couldn’t afford to pass up free legal representation from the top criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, no matter who that attorney’s son was—had been. Robert released Martin’s shoulder and headed for the door, pausing when his partner spoke.
“The press is going to crucify you for this. I know you think he might be innocent, but what if he’s not? What if he killed Gabe and all those other boys?”
Robert glanced back over his shoulder and pulled the door open, wishing he could tell the man everything. “Just trust me.”
The big man winced. “That’s the problem. I don’t.”
CHAPTER 10
I stood at the dining room table and studied a puzzle piece and the box, trying to find a match between the two. Clementine wove between my legs, her tail tickling the backs of my bare knees. I twitched away. “Clem, stop.”
She leaped onto the closest chair and mewed for attention. Setting the box on the table, I petted her head and stared down at the board.
Today was not a good day. My two o’clock appointment had gone completely silent on me, which might have been a pleasant change of pace if I wasn’t already paranoid about my skills as a shrink.
I never used to worry about this. I’d always been a little overly cocky, convinced that I could wave my pen, open my mouth, and spew out a brilliant dialogue that would twist my clients’ brains into performing however I wanted them to. But ever since John and Brooke had died, I had sunk further and further into the belief that my emotional radar was temporarily—or maybe even permanently—on the fritz.
Take my last meeting with John. He’d been furious at Brooke. I remember sitting across from him and feeling the spittle hit my cheek as he had ranted about the man he thought she was seeing.
I hadn’t believed it, but my job wasn’t to judge his wife’s innocence—only to filter and analyze his thinking. The majority of trust issues were rooted in real-life experience, originating as far back as childhood. John had continually balked at discussions of his adolescence, which only gave further credence to his trust issues as a natural defense mechanism. If my psychological tuning fork had been in proper pitch, I would have ignored efforts to diagnose the root of his insecurities and instead focused on the more glaring possibility—that his anger would cycle out of control and into physical violence.
From my television in the living room, a game show came on. I glanced over and watched the host bound toward the stage, high-fiving the audience as he went.
I’ve always held an ugly hypothesis about marriage—that at some point, one spouse secretly wishes the other would die.
It’s not a popular theory. When I broach it at psychology events and forums, it always sparks an argument, some doctors jumping into denial with gasps and sputters and an insistence that they’ve been married forty years and NEVER ONCE wished death on their spouse. But deep inside, in the dark place that they squash down and pretend doesn’t exist . . . I know there’s always been a true and weak moment where the thought—the hope—flickers. For most people, it’s fleeting. For some—like John—it was a splinter. A deep splinter that broke off under the skin, the sort that was almost impossible to remove unless you peeled back the entire area, and no one would do that, so it festered. It grew infected. It killed and ate away at surrounding healthy tissue and throbbed and ached and dominated every thought and action until it controlled an entire life.
I had listened to so much deliberation and thoughts about hurting Brooke that it had become background noise. I’d become desensitized to it. I had accepted the fact that John fantasized over killing Brooke and had stopped being aghast at the idea because I didn’t believe it would ever happen. They’d been married fifteen years. If he was really going to kill the woman, he would have done it already. So what if he thought Brooke was having an affair? He’d been almost as irate a year earlier, when she’d parked on a hill and hadn’t fully engaged the emergency brake and the sedan had rolled into a parked car.
This wasn’t my fault. I pushed a five-sided piece into place and mentally chanted the words, trying to find truth in them.
This wasn’t my fault. I’d argued with him in Brooke’s defense. Stood up for the woman. Pointed out all their history and his false insecurities.
This wasn’t my fault. Maybe she really did have a heart attack.
I lifted my wineglass and took a deep sip, holding the smooth merlot on my tongue for a moment, then let it seep down my throat.
The doorbell rang, a sharp ding-dong of intrusion, and I turned at the sound as Clementine sprinted past me and hid under the couch.
Robert Kavin stood on my front stoop, a bouquet of flowers in hand. I paused in the foyer and hesitated.
It was late, almost nine. Too late for a pop-in, though I had a staunch policy against them at any hour. I could just ease back around the corner and into the dark hall. Stay away from the windows in the hope he would lose interest and head home.
“Gwen.” He placed his hand on the door. “I can see you through the glass.”